Maryland high schooler handcuffed when AI security mistakes Doritos for gun

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Oct 28, 2025

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A Maryland teenager feared for his life when his high school’s AI-powered security system mistook his bag of chips for a firearm.

Baltimore County high school student Taki Allen told WBAL-TV that he was hanging out with friends after football practice last week when eight police cars rolled up on them.

“At first, I didn’t know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?'” Allen told the station.

It wasn’t until he was ordered to get on his knees, placed in handcuffed and searched that authorities concluded Kenwood High School’s security software mistook an image of him putting a Doritos bag into his pocket for someone handling a gun.

“The first thing I was wondering was, was I about to die? Because they had a gun pointed at me,” Allen said.

Police told WBAL that officers responded to the school following a report of a suspicious person with a weapon and referred further inquiries to the high school’s security service provider, which declined to comment on internal procedures.

High schools across Baltimore County last year implemented a gun detection system that uses AI to scan what security cameras are seeing and alert law enforcement when a potential weapon is detected.

The school’s principal informed parents that the Department of School Safety and Security quickly canceled the initial alert after verifying Allen wasn’t carrying a weapon, but police still responded. The school acknowledged the situation was surely “upsetting” for Allen and the students who witnessed the police response.